(Photo by: TiffanyShlain.com)
Tiffany Shlain, Sundance Institute Artist
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain, 43, is a filmmaker, public speaker, writer, founder of The Webby Awards, and co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. She has been invited to advise former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the U.S. State Department has used her films to represent America at embassies around the world.
It was a dream to have the world premiere of my first feature documentary at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The film was Connected, and one of the ideas I explored at the climax of the story was what I called “The Participatory Revolution,” the potential of so many people around the world having cameras in their hands at all times, connected to the Internet. So after the premiere, my team and I had an idea that we call “Cloud Filmmaking,” where we’d make a film together with all those people around the world. Over the last three years, we’ve released four of these “Cloud Films,” all putting the idea of the Participatory Revolution into action.
In the beginning of this year, AOL approached me to make an original film series for them where we’d explore some of the new ways we are creating films. In our eight-episode (three to six minutes each) series “The Future Starts Here,” we explore everything from the creative process to the history and future of robots to this Participatory Revolution and cloud filmmaking, delving into the question, what will the world look like when everyone is able to contribute, participate, collaborate, and create?
It used to be that our history books told the story of a few people, but when we look back at today, the story will finally be about all of us. Check out our 3 min episode, “The Participatory Revolution.”
You can watch the whole series here.
“What will the world look like when everyone is able to contribute, participate, collaborate, and create?”